Debate #3: Bayonets, Horses, And Jihadis

I’m not going to write a whole lot about the debate, since I only saw a few snippets, being at a friends house watching the Bears-Lions game, and John Hawkins does a good job of breaking it all down. Two interesting ones I did hear (while walking in the kitchen for a beer or food, friends wife, a big Obama supporter, was watching it). Here’s the first

(Daily Caller) In a debate exchange Monday night that set Twitter on fire, President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney crossed swords over the kinds of equipment and materials the U.S. military uses for modern warfare.

In a response to Romney’s barb that Obama has allowed the U.S. Navy’s inventory of battleships to approach a historic low mark, Obama snarked that “we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed.”

As the article points out, horses were used as the first US soldiers entered the fight in Afghanistan in 2001. “And bayonets remain a fixture in Army infantry training and deployment.” While we certainly do have fewer horses, Obama apparently thinks the only thing we have are drones, which our Nobel Peace Prize president uses to personally authorize strikes using his kill list, which should make Liberals nuts.

Obama also added in that same talking point “We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.”

Perhaps we can ask a “corpse-men” about those ships. If you watched that, you realized that Obama wasn’t being snarky, but truly was having a tough time remembering the name for those “ships that go underwater.” Oh, and tip for the Pres, they aren’t referred to as ships, but boats.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney identified “jihadists” as the enemy facing the United States in the Middle East, marking a sharp rhetorical contrast with U.S. defense policy in place since 2001.

“We’re going to have to put in place a very comprehensive and robust strategy to help the – the world of Islam and other parts of the world, reject this radical violent extremism,” Romney said, highlighting the link between Islam and terrorism.

“We can’t kill our way out of this mess … The right course for us is to make sure that we go after the – the people who are leaders of these various anti-American groups and these – these jihadists, but also help the Muslim world,” Romney said.

This is a serious break from both the Bush and Obama administrations, which refuse to really link terrorism to Islam in any form or fashion. They would refer to terrorism, terrorists, violent extremists, and so forth, but rarely would there be any mention that these folks are doing it in the name of Mohammed and Allah. Not long after 9/11, we’d hear about these people who are perverting Islam to kill in the religion’s name, but that dried up quickly. Sure, most realized that the majority of terrorism in the world is performed by those who follow Mohammed (there have been 19809 terrorist attacks since 9/11, the majority by Islamists, ie, Islamic extremists, not too mention all the other things like honor killings, riots, arson, mayhem, vandalism, murders, etc), but the US government tends to take a nebulous approach when naming it.

(Jerusalem Post) One of President Barack Obama’s main themes is to convince Middle East Islamists that America is not their enemy. But the reason this strategy never works is that the radicals know better. The United States is their enemy.

No amount of sympathy, empathy, economic aid, apology or appeasement will change this fact. Nor did such efforts succeed in making either Obama or the United States popular in such circles and the tens of millions of people influenced by them. The only thing surprising about all of this is that so few “experts” and politicians seem to comprehend it.

To defeat something, you have to name something. You have to know what you’re fighting. It doesn’t always have to be direct conflict using bullets and Hellfire missiles: it can be through outreach and education. One of the big problems is not so much the Islamic terrorists, but the spread of hardcore extremist Islam, as taught in the Mosques and madrasas (Islamic schools). This is occurring all over the world. Slowly, more and more are being indoctrinated into this perversion of Islam.

Oh, and one last thing, regarding another snippet I heard regarding Israel

I’m sure Israel is thrilled that Obama would stand with them after they were nuked #alittletoolate